So the long weekend in DC is complete, as are all of my semester grading requirements, so its time to get back to the blog. At least until I leave for Hawaii next week, that is!
Here are a few things that caught my eye over the last day or two, just in case you missed them:
+ Deputy attorney general Paul McNulty has resigned his post at the DoJ. McNulty is apparently quite angry that Gonzales' is trying to lay the blame for the prosecutor purge on him. Wait... forget trying. He's now claiming that it is all McNulty's fault. I can't help but ask... is Gonzales a moron? McNulty is already pissed, and he has yet to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Wow.
+ If this is how Gonzales generally behaves, I'm surprised anyone works for the man. These people really have no understanding of what the phrase "rule of law" means. It's as if they think 9/11 turned the presidency into a monarchy. No summary - just go read.
[UPDATE: Scratch that. This section is far too important not to excerpt:
At the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who was leading the questioning, asked the following. "So in sum, it was your belief that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card were trying to take advantage of an ill and maybe disoriented man to try and get him to do something that many, at least in the Justice Department, thought was against the law? Was that a correct summation?"]
Comey answered directly. "I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded -- the department as a whole -- was unable to be certified as to its legality. And that was my concern."
+ Behavior like that really is a common theme among current and former administration officials. Check out this report on the way Paul Wolfowitz treated staff members who were upset about his efforts to give his girlfriend a huge raise. This quote is particularly choice: "If they f-ck with me or Shaha...I have enough on them to f-ck them too."
+ Want another example of just how bad things are at Justice? At least two African-American employees in the Voting Rights section of the Civil Rights division have filed Equal Employment Opportunity complaints against their bosses.
+ Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama apprently don't yet know how they will vote on Sen. Feingold's proposal to begin withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days. I'm with Kevin in thinking that is ridiculous. Feingold's proposal isn't new; they should be able to give us something more than "no comment" at this point.
+ John Edwards, by contrast, knows exactly what he would do, and he isn't shying away from telling people. The more I see of him, the more I like. Hmmm...
+ The military is blocking access to MySpace, YouTube, Photobucket, Live365, and numerous other social networking sites. This follows a policy shift that shut down all military blogs. Because nothing says "support the troops" more than restricting their access to information and entertainment.
+ Of course, this new policy says nothing about efforts by the Pentagon itself to use such sites for propaganda purposes. Those efforts are being redoubled.
+ The Pentagon is now apparently both passing over for promotion and at times even prosecuting those members of the JAG Corps who served as counsel to war on terror detainees.
+ Major Gen. John Batiste, the man who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, has been fired from his consulting gig with CBS because of his participation in an anti-war VoteVets.org ad. For CBS, opposing the war is apparently "political advocacy" and "partisan politics," but supporting the war is not. That's everything that is wrong with our media in a nutshell.
+ I'm with Ezra. Why everyone seems so terrified of Social Security insolvency is beyond me. As Ezra puts it, " Look at that gentle slope for Social Security! You could do that in Rockports! Mt. Medicare and Medicaid, by contrast, require climbing gear." Remember that graph whenever you read stories about government spending.
+ And last but not least, Lindsay Lohan is Maxim's "hottest woman in the world." And Sarah Silverman is both #29 and on the cover? What? I'm sorry, but there's something seriously wrong with the people at Maxim.
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